


From head to hand

by SkekLa



Series: A thousand years have passed [5]
Category: The Dark Crystal (1982)
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe, Drawing can be a pain, Ego battle, Gen, Moral Ambiguity, Moral Dilemmas
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-17
Updated: 2019-12-17
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:08:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21832687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SkekLa/pseuds/SkekLa
Summary: A snippet where the skeksis Illustrator faces the fact that help can come from unexpected places, and realises she might´ve  been underestimating certain others.
Series: A thousand years have passed [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1518779
Kudos: 5





	From head to hand

**Author's Note:**

> ***Please keep in mind that these fanfictions are meant to take place in an Alternate Universe where certain things might slightly differ from canon. Albeit, this is heavily based off the classic Dark Crystal movie (1982) and some of the canon and characterisations might sound off to anyone who´s not watched the movie (given how certain things were retconned and/or changed by the recent Netflix series)  
> All the canon lore and recogniseable characterisations for canon characters within this fic are based off the classic movie and its associated 80´s book lore and/or Legends of the Dark Crystal (2007). *Also referencing Brian Froud´s Creation Myths (2011)*
> 
> The rest of what´s seen at my fanworks is just personal headcanon.

-“This won’t do…it looks horrendous!...BAH! ”-

A pale taloned hand swoop a parchment sheet off into a pile where many others laid, crumpling on the ground and over a black skirt’s hem and a pair of threadbare burgundy shoes which shifted nervously, peeking out from the tawny sheets.

The Illustrator had not destroyed it tho: parchment was a needful material and having the gelflings cleaning it for later use would be better. That was, IF she did not decide to keep even the flawed ones as remembrance, as she always did in the end.

The skeksis had already lost the count of times she had attempted to draw the darned creature as it was needed.

It was supposed to be a ruffnaw, and she had never seen one but during a fleeting moment, many trines ago, when she was still much younger and her race used to move out in small delegations, for either diplomatic visits to villagers or census taking.

It had been during one rare occasion when she had seen the animal...it had poked it’s head out of a hole which seemed to erupt on its own from the earthy ground below their feet---and there it was: threatening, eyeless, black as midnight and with a deformed pink snout which bristled with an array of multiple nostrils and tentacles, it’s big clawed paws waving in the air.

She still remembered it well, even if the dreadful vision had been fleeting: The animal had backed down and dissapeared swiftly into it’s den after the first screams and aggressive actions from her group, and had represented no real threat.

Ironically, it was NOW-some five hundred trines later- that the ruffnaw meant trouble for her.

She needed to draw it for the accursed bestiary the Scrollkeeper had began to create assisted by the increasing anatomical knowledge of the Scientist, as to keep record of all the skeksis had came to ackowledge on the local fauna.

And the blasted creature refused to come out of her quill in a realistic enough manner.

-“But why?---I remember well enough---Curse it!”- Muttered SkekLa between her teeth, as yet another parchment sheet was pawed out of the lectern at which she sat, and came to add to the pile which was now already burying her ankle-deep.

Pressing a squalid taloned hand to her brow, the skeksis heaved her chest and tried to calm down. Her temples were beating and pain was spreading from there to her neck and shoulders. Tension was killing her, she was not really young anymore...and pondering about it made her feel even more miserable.

Perhaps she was failing at her craft because she had become too old to do it right?

Perhaps they were all becoming way too---

Shaking her head and slamming a hand on the lectern, she repressed a frustrated screech, and remained there with her eyes closed, breathing intensely.

Thinking about drawing becoming harder for her, and about aches, and aging, and the future truly wrecked her nerves lately, she could not help it.

She had to somehow stop winding herself up about it---

-“Lord Illustrator SkekLa?...”-

Her eyes opened with a twitch and her pointy head turned to follow the sound.

It was only Miach, the Scrollkeeper’s assistant.

The redhaired gelfling boy had been cramming parchment rolls and trying to hoist a book along with them into a shelf. She had never noticed he had stopped doing his task, yet somehow he had suddenly appeared standing beside her lectern, looking up at her with the teary wide eyes of a kicked rakkida cubling.

-“What is it, Gelfling?”- she blurted out, stroking her talons across her pained brow

-“If your Master thinks I should have this page of his new book already finished, then you can go tell him t—“-

Rising his hands and waving them lithely in an appeasing gesture, the boy replied hastily -“N-no...no, Lord Illustrator...I...I saw you apparently striving with your work today and---“-

The skeksis’ eyes narrowed in offense, piercing through the cowering gelfling boy

-“Striving, indeed!...I am a Master of my trade, gelfling, I do not STRIVE with it. I am only taking time to achieve perfection”-

-“Lord Illustrator...My intention is not to offend you! I believe I could assist you if you would not mind it, and I thought it would be wise to offer you...my help...”-

SkekLa could not believe what Miach had just said. Help her with drawing?

The gelfling’s daring way of addressing at her contrivance really bothered her, and there was no possible manner in which this runt of a creature could help her, anyway.

Who could draw better than she did? Certainly noone within this castle.

If anything were troubling her, a gelfling would be the last creature on Thra to whom she’d share her problems with. They wouldn’t understand, anyways. They lived quickly, and noisily, shown no concerns for their future, and died too soon, at peace with said rhytm of things. They did not know- they could not know- how it felt to constantly suffer a griping fear of sickness, decay and death. There was no manner in which those foolish creatures could understand what it was to faintly remember having been eternal, and finding oneself constricted within a body which made her proud and strong, and yet she could feel it dying with every single step she gave.

The all-present awareness of their own mortality had crept within the skeksis , growing into much more than anyone in the court could take. It didn’t only cause them pain and illness, but it began to slowly, persistently ruin their lives, their humor, their wits, their work...

And this GELFLING thought he could help her.

Making an effort to refrain her impulse of kicking SkekOk’s servant away from her sight, the Illustrator replied –“If what you want is to help, Gelfling, carry those empty ink flasks to the lowest drawers of the major shelf. Just leave them there, soon enough I shall have more ink made to refill them. Don't you drop them, they're fragile. Go.”- And to punctuate her speech properly, she rose her silver encased talon and pointed it haughtily in direction of the flasks she had mentioned to Miach. 

The gelfling bent in a small obeissance and immediately picked up the scattered crystal flasks with unsuspected haste, fitting their cork lids back into their place, and accomodating them cleanly inside the drawer.

Then he moved back to the lectern, standing beside it in silence, and kept staring at the skeksis as if he were asking her permission to address her once more.

-“Well, why do you stand there like a dead Apeknot tree, boy? There--fold that bundle of fabric you see there over that table and take it to the Ornamentalist. If he asks why I sent it, tell him I'll later explain. Out!- Don’t dawdle! Git!”-

Hissed SkekLa, making an offhanded gesture at him. The gefling did not move.

-“PLEASE, Lord Illustrator...let me assist you...I beg you...”-

This was more than SkekLa could take-or understand- she had never seen a gelfling being so persistent about anything. They were mostly obedient and simple to command.

This annoyed her as much as it made her curious, so she stretched out her scrawny neck, craning her head closer to the gelfling’s face, and peered straight into his eyes.

-“Alright, gelfling. Do you believe you can help me? Let us see where your boldness will take you. Here!.”- she growled, slamming a clean parchment sheet into the lectern before her. –“DRAW, if you think you can. I have never even seen any of you gelflings hold a quill in my entire life. It will be an oddity to watch you do it.”-

The gelfling smiled with something dangerously simmilar to amusement.

-“In my village we do not use writing or drawing tools, Lord Illustrator...but I have been taught dream-etching Vliyaya when I was young... it had been my job to engrave songs, stories and images on parchment and stone...words that stay. What you, skeksis Lords, call writing.”-

SkekLa’s eyes widened and despite herself, a cluck of surprise escaped her beak.

-“Dream-Etching? ...I have not seen a gelfling do dream-etching in more than two hundred trines, boy!...and the few who did it back then were elderly masons and builders...”-

-“But I know how to do it, Lord Illustrator! I have learnt from Tiarna, our village’s song-teller...she was my grandmother...”-

The skeksis furrowed her brow. –“Tiarna. I Don’t remember her. I Don’t think I even knew of her.”- she said dismissively, although curiosity about this gelfling’s ability had been sparked within her old brain.

-“Well, then. Will you show me this ability you say you have, or not?”-

Miach blinked in confusion. –“I do not know what had you wanted to draw, Lord Illustrator.”-

She had never mentioned the thing to the boy, of course.

-“A ruffnaw. It was a drawing of a ruffnaw. It must show all it’s body, from head to tail.”-

The gelfling frowned pensively, and shook his head. –“I have never seen more than a ruffnaw’s head...I could not draw it’s lower body or it’s tail if it has one, since I have never seen them...”

SkekLa cackled between her teeth.

-“Oh well...there it goes, hmm?. Go on, that fabric won't carry itself. Do what I told you to, my patience is already wasted--”-

-“Please, allow me to try it, Mylord...If I could see it, I could draw for you exactly what I’d see.”-

SkekLa was growing increasingly annoyed at this time loss, and tilting her head warningly, she grunted –“And how do you suppose I could show you one? “-

The gelfling smiled and straightened his ears –“That is easy, Lord Illustrator! Think of it, and allow me to touch your hand for a moment. I will see it through your memories. If that is not too bold from me to ask...”-

The skeksis gave off a raspy jaded laugh. –“You want to do that odd thing you gelflings do to share memories...with me? You want to dreamfast with one of your Lords? HA!...”-

Miach nodded in affirmation –“Well...yes! If you do not oppose, of course, Lord Illustrator...”-

SkekLa then allowed her left hand loosely dangle in front of the gelfling, smiling defiantly. –“What’s there to lose? MORE time?...Try it. And do not fail, or I shall have your Master know of your insolent behavior...”- she said, looking at the Scroll Keeper who was-as most usual- asleep over his table- “...When he wakes up.”-

Without further words, Miach reached his small hand to the skeksis’ pale talon, and dared to hold it for a moment. It was very breef, but the skeksis drew promptly backwards, jolting as if she’d suffered an electrical discharge.

-“Agh!---Hufff---so that was it-?...”- she demanded, attempting to not show as much surprise and amazement as she felt. She had seen, for the smallest second, a gelfling village, faces she did not know, gelfling children playing with wicker hoops and a table filled with a family reunited for dinner. They probably had been memories from the Scrollkeeper’s servant, if she did understand what dreamfasting was supposed to be.

It was shocking to think she had seen into a gelfling’s head.

Now a little wary about what Miach could have seen within her mind- although she had indeed attempted to focus on the image of the ruffnaw only- she blinked to steer her vision, and paid attention to what the gelfling was now doing.

Miach had taken the parchment sheet she had placed over her lectern,and sat on the floor with the sheet laid cleanly over his crossed legs. Holding his hands up over the tawny surface of the parchment, without touching it’s surface, the gelfling seemed to be concentrating.

SkekLa felt amused, the momentary shock from the previous strange experience disipating before the funny image of that gelfling lad sitting there with a blank sheet on his legs while biting his lip and folding his ears from the effort.

She was just about to cackle with laughter when something happened.

From the tip of the gelfling’s fingers emerged a faint blue light, iradiating from his hands and into the parchment.

The Illustrator needed all her pride and self-control to not jump off of the lectern’s seat and kneel by his side to look closer at the proccess.

Stiff and wide-eyed, she stared at Miach, as he moved his hands in the air, and the blue radiance sipping from his fingers bounced over the blank sheet, each motion being mimicked by a pattern which seemed to burn itself into the formerly clean page.

When it was done, the gelfling simply smiled and perked up his ears with joy.

-“There it is, Lord Illustrator. I hope it is accurate enough!”-

SkekLa had not noticed she had been holding her breath, until Miach’s voice snapped her out of the trance of watching him draw with his dream-etching ability.

-“It—huff...it is-quite good, gelfling.”- She said in the firmest voice she could ellicit.

The drawing was PERFECT.

-“Should I take it to Lord Scrollkeeper and ask him what he needs to be drawn next, Lord Illustrator-?”- asked the gelfling, more confidently than before.

-“NO! No, you mustn’t!”- Screeched SkekLa, prying the dream-etched drawn ruffnaw from his hands.

-“It is I who must create the illustrations for the castle’s record-keeping. I! And noone else!”-

Miach recoiled, all his pride now reduced to baffled waryness.

-“I ...regret my overconfidence, Lord Illustrator. I miss my former work...I only meant to help...”-

The skeksis retorted with both bitterness and a form of unwilling recognition–“you helped more than enough, gelfling. You did well. Leave. Take that fabric with you, I want the Ornamentalist to receive it soon!”-

Watching the gelfling haste to the door with the colorful bundle of fabric -which she'd later ask the Ornamentalist to have dyed and decorated with some sigils for her, since she wanted to claim it as her new chamber-curtains- the Illustrator nodded wearily, yet filled with determination.

Miach had helped well enough, indeed!

Seeing a gelfling trying to surpass her skills at her own work had spurred her, lighting a tiny beacon of will within her old heart. That beacon would grow into a wildfire soon, driving her to draw with renewed passion, making her push herself to her skills’ limits to achieve a drawing which could surpass all the former she had made.

SkekLa knew that , from this moment on, she would never allow herself to make a drawing which did not look exactly as the image her head had conjured up for it, just like that gelfling, she would translate with absolute accuracy from hed to hand, letting the drawings flow from her and through the quill as if that blue magic could be born from her talons as well as it had poured from his fingers.

She felt ashamed for admiring anything on a gelfling, but she could not help it.

And yet, she knew she would make all possible efforts to prove herself she could do better than that. Better than magic, with ink and quill alone.

She would not destroy the dream-etched ruffnaw, but keep it as a reminder of that strange, fleeting moment, when she had first seen gelflings as much more equal to her than she would ever dare to recognize.

**Author's Note:**

> ****Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, all Dark Crystal canon characters and events etc. are the property of their respective owners (Brian Froud, Jim Henson and everyone who worked in the making of the Dark Crystal). The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author (SkekLa) is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended.****


End file.
